The Blonde Leading the Blind: Why Women Need to Stop Taking Love Advice from Beyonce’

Something bothers me about “ratchet Beyonce’”.  When I bought The Dream’s last album I got a preview of her on the track “Turn Up” and I kind of liked her, but after hearing about her riding on surfboards and other candid details of her fondness for dromedary sex, I must admit I feel a lot of things but the least of them is “turned on”.

Not too long after the Beyonce’s latest epic release, HuffPost published a piece by Black Colored Girls called The Problem with Beyhive “Bottom Bitch” Feminism which takes an articulate look into the problem with placing Beyonce’ as a poster child for ratchet feminism.  It was the pea for my princess as to what exactly bothered me about this somewhat brand new Beyonce’.

It’s no secret that Beyonce’ has struggled to find her voice in her career in a way that most women could relate to. How often have we moved from a situation where our parents were calling the shots, directly to an employer or mate who made all of the decisions for us? I remember watching interviews with Beyonce’ in the past where she just had this vacant gaze that made me wonder if a Disney short was playing behind her eyes while either Kelly, Mama Tina or even Solange seemed to speak with so much confidence.  But with every album I saw her grow, and when she shed her father as her manager and married Jay-Z it almost seemed that the R&B butterfly had broken free and found her own voice…or did she merely fly under another man’s wing?

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10 Ways to Avoid Killing Your Fiance’ Before Your Wedding Day

Ever since I got engaged in July whenever someone asks me have we picked a date I jokingly respond, “You mean if I don’t kill him first?” But on Christmas Eve for at least 5 seconds I really wanted to choke slam the shit out of my fiancé.  I visually imagined stabbing him in his neck with a Gel roller pen in the cup holder of his truck and rolling his gurgling body over the edge of I-76 West.  And it all started with an argument over how tacky I believe it is to only feed some of the people that you invite to your wedding ceremony. This man seriously wants to walk out of our wedding and tell half of our guests we’ll catch them later while we take the others to eat because he doesn’t want to blow the budget.

I’ve calmed down since then, but I owe a sincere apology to all of those people I felt took wedding planning too seriously before I became someone’s fiancé.  What no one ever tells you is that wedding planning is not just about venues, flowers and wedding websites.  It’s about finding a middle ground between values that you’ve been raised with. It’s about bushwhacking through the agressive opinions of family members and friends. It’s about being honest about your style as a couple and sticking together because at the end of the day you’re the only one that has to deal with the smell he leaves in the bathroom after Taco Bell.

So if you’re planning a wedding and you ever find yourself at a point where attempted murder charges dim in comparison to spending another day arguing over chair sashes, remind yourself of the following:

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Can a Relationship Continue after a Rejected Marriage Proposal?

There are few moments in life that visibly humble a man.  I remember being terrified seeing my father in tears after the death of his father. It was the first time I realized that real parents aren’t perfect and perfect parents aren’t real.  They’re these older versions of you with feelings and insecurities and worries that cancer could very well happen to them.  Then there’s the moment when a man realizes that this world is about so much more than his bank account balance, sex and Air Jordan Retros: the day he becomes a father.  Now I can’t relate just yet but I think this quote by Elizabeth Stone pretty much sums it up: “Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

The only other time I believe you’ll catch a man at his most vulnerable, when he feels excited and scared shitless at the same time is when he proposes to the woman he loves.  Now that my fiance’ has finally popped the question I can finally see how all of his anxiety was playing out all summer long until he finally got the guts to go through with it as I clipped coupons one Sunday night.  The repeated jokes about how he would throw the ring on the table and be like, “Let’s do this.”  It was all because he was testing me…and scared to death.

By its nature, marriage proposals put men in a weak position.  Let’s call it what is it:  Here’s your protective, alpha male on bended knee, looking up at you submitting to you with half his savings in his hand.  He’s retiring his nutsack, he’s tapping out on all of the untapped ass out there that he never had the chance to try, he’s trusting your forgetful ass to not drop his down payment on a house down the drain while you dye your hair, he’s saying spending the rest of his life with you and only you means more than that first-nut feeling ever will.  I mean, I’m a woman and typically this is supposed to be the day we spend half of our girlhood daydreaming about and even I find myself panicking about all the sex I am never going to have ever again.

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10 Signs You’re Probably A Pretty Girl

Source: OceanUp.com

Even though I ‘m not really buying Beyonce’s cliché confessions of the hard knock life of being beautiful on “Pretty Hurts”, admittedly, “pretty” aches a little from time.

The problem with being pretty is that it is being claimed by too many women who don’t quite fit the description.  There is an Instagram epidemic of overly-confident selfies being labeled #PrettyGirlRock and  #PrettyGang by women who look like this:

Source: MadBetty.com

Ironically the very women who could probably claim #TeamPretty are the very ones who don’t feel comfortable doing so.  It’s like some kind of unwritten rule of being attractive that you don’t run around declaring your beauty because somehow that automatically makes you a bitch.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking the way you look and claiming that.  In fact too many women wait to be told how attractive they are by unrealistic standards that men create that lie somewhere between anime movies and King magazine.  But all too often many of us run from the label as we constantly obsess over what flaws deny us the opportunity to be “the pretty one”.  It’s like the moment when we decide that we’re pretty bad ass, some rapper comes along and reassures us that since we’re not a “light-skinned thick redbone” we surely aren’t.

So just in case you needed some reassuring, if any of the following things are happening to you, you might just have a case of being pretty.  So get your hashtag on and own that shit:

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Thank Him Later: Drake Donates Studio to Strawberry Mansion High School

Source: ABCNews.go.com

Knowing the lengths I have traveled literally to support one of my favorite artists, a co-worker shared this link with me about Grammy-winning rapper Drake getting his “give back” on to North Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion High School.

Drake Reveals Big Surprise for Philadelphia High School | Video – ABC News.

I must admit, it’s refreshing to see a rapper doing something other than getting charged with DUI’s, saving hoes on reality shows and making it rain at King of Diamonds (so far Drake has accomplished two out of three of these).  Admittedly, I was pissed.  I have been trying to get on this man’s payroll for a minute, or at least snag an interview and I never had any faith that our path’s would intersect since he spends most of his days entertaining our youth while I spend most of my days empowering and educating them.  Seriously, unless Aubs wants to make an album about safer sex and teen pregnancy prevention, I’m not too sure how we’d link up professionally.  But here he is doing his part so that hopefully our Philadelphia teens have something to focus on besides killing and impregnating one another and I respect that.  It makes me love him just a little bit more than I already had.

First I wondered, “Why Strawberry Mansion?” The Philadelphia school district as a whole is on life support.  Violence, high drop-out rates and decreased emphasis on extra-curricular activities and culture is a Philadelphia thing, not just a Strawberry Mansion thing.  I’ve spent the last three years of my classes traveling to and from many of our city’s high school preaching parenting education and I can’t tell you how many classes have been canceled because of a fight where the police was called.  I’m always amazed at how many students I have seen start at a traditional school only to reappear in one of my alternative school classes, and then pop up months later at a shelter or drug recovery center as they struggle to conquer the circumstances of their surroundings.  How many students have I met over the age of eighteen that don’t know the purpose of a menstrual cycle or who the 16th president was? So what exactly drew Drizzy to Mansion?

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Would You Like a Tour? Sure, Drake, But I’ll Take OVOFest Instead

It’s official: I’m a groupie.  On my red eye flight to Philly from Las Vegas early last Sunday morning I found myself thinking, “I just visited Vegas for the weekend to see Drake.  That just happened.”  I mean sure I could’ve waited for his Would You Like a Tour? to hit Philly but I was scheduled to be on a cruise ship in the middle of the Western Carribbean the night he’d be performing.

So I said why not combine a trip to my third favorite city with a concert featuring my favorite Canadian rapper/singer? I got on Ticketmaster and Bookit.com and made my travel dreams come true and made one of my best friends tag along.  Who knew that her company would end up being one of the best things about the night?

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